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Judge Says University Can Deny Course Credit to Christian Graduates Taught With Creationism Texts
Fox News ^ | August 13, 2008

Posted on 08/13/2008 9:44:45 AM PDT by Sopater

A federal judge has ruled the University of California can deny course credit to Christian high school graduates who have been taught with textbooks that reject evolution and declare the Bible infallible, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles ruled Friday that the school's review committees did not discriminate against Christians because of religious viewpoints when it denied credit to those taught with certain religious textbooks, but instead made a legitimate claim that the texts failed to teach critical thinking and omitted important science and history topics.

Charles Robinson, the university's vice president for legal affairs, told the Chronicle that the ruling "confirms that UC may apply the same admissions standards to all students and to all high schools without regard to their religious affiliations."

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; Philosophy; US: California
KEYWORDS: academia; atheismandstate; christianschools; confesstothestate; creation; creationism; education; evolution; heresy; highereducation; homeschool; judiciary; publikskoolz; ruling; uc
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To: allmendream

==Did nylon digesting bacteria DEVOLVE so that they could utilize a new food source?

According to Creation Scientists, bacterial plasmids seem to be adaptive elements built in by the creator so bacteria can adapt to many environments while “maintaining the integrety of the main chromosome.”

==Did citrate plus e.coli DEVOLVE so that they could digest citrate?

Has the ability of the e.coli to adapt to a new environment, such as constantly being exposed to citrate, been ruled out? Again, from what I have read, even the scientists who conducted the experiment aren’t sure what’s going on: “Lenski’s team is still working to understand ‘just what that earlier change was, and how it made the . . . mutation possible.’”

==Do populations subjected to the selective pressure of heat stress DEVOLVE such that they can better survive at higher temperatures?

Again, what’s your evidence that their ability to adapt is NOT built right in???


441 posted on 08/15/2008 12:33:43 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: allmendream; MrB
"But yes, the nylon digesting bacteria evolved its enzyme from a precursor that was unable to digest nylon, it took two amino acid substitutions to make it capable of digesting nylon."

In the case of citrate plus e.coli it was a controlled experiment in evolution (you know, the Science that some idiots claim is not an experimental Science) and the original e.coli (and many populations of others that evolved independently) did not have the capability of digesting citrate.

A person has to be extremely lacking in critical-thinking skills not to understand that the mutations necessary for nylon-digestion did not only occur after the creation of nylon.

Those bacteria receiving the nylon-digestion mutations prior to the creation of nylon would have merely died.

Same w/ citrate.

442 posted on 08/15/2008 12:34:50 PM PDT by GourmetDan (Eccl 10:2 - The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.)
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To: GourmetDan
I believe in both abiotic processes AND God. What is to prevent God from using abiotic processes when HE commanded the Oceans to bring forth life?

How do you suppose I believe that mutations occur only when an opportunity for survival presents itself? They usually only PERSIST within a population (and perhaps rise to 100% presence in the population) when it confers some survival advantage.

Mutations happen all the time, there is no way to stop it as DNA replication is itself a mutagenic process. Mutations are usually selectively neutral, most mutations that are not neutral are detrimental (as the nylon digesting mutations would be until nylon was invented and available as a food source) and some are beneficial but only within a certain context (like mutations that make proteins that work better at higher temperatures).

This in no way suggest that mutations only HAPPEN when they would confer some advantage. Sheesh. Maybe if you understood even the rudiments of the theory you wish to criticize you wouldn't’ sound so ignorant.

443 posted on 08/15/2008 12:35:43 PM PDT by allmendream (If "the New Yorker" makes a joke, and liberals don't get it, is it still funny?)
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To: GodGunsGuts
‘just what that earlier change was, and how it made the . . . mutation possible.’

The answer is, it ISN'T due to a mutation. This ability was already in the genome.

This conclusion is entirely consistent with observation.

444 posted on 08/15/2008 12:36:22 PM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: MrB
You are quite right, except the ability to adapt isn't necessarily the sole job of the genome, as the field of epigenetics is increasingly bearing out.
445 posted on 08/15/2008 12:39:16 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts

The ability to adapt IS built right in! Wow. Finally you have stumbled upon the truth.

Living systems are capable of adapting to selective pressure by means of natural selection of genetic variation!

In the case of heat stress, a particular population of bacteria subjected to heat stress went through every possible single change permutation of a particular gene until it produced the high heat protein that eventually dominated the entire population. Now if every possible combination of a single change was attempted, how is evolution supposed to be “random”?


446 posted on 08/15/2008 12:42:17 PM PDT by allmendream (If "the New Yorker" makes a joke, and liberals don't get it, is it still funny?)
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To: allmendream

==I believe in both abiotic processes AND God. What is to prevent God from using abiotic processes when HE commanded the Oceans to bring forth life?

What is to prevent God from getting life started by creating each original life form fully formed and fully functional?


447 posted on 08/15/2008 12:42:35 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts

Thanks for the ping!


448 posted on 08/15/2008 12:42:53 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: tacticalogic
. . .but so there hasn't been any evidence presented that it was.

True, nor that it wasn't. But I can tell you based on my personal experience that graduates of Christian schools and home schools that I know can regurgitate evolutionary theory better than any graduate of public school.

Obviously, my personal experience is limited as compared to the total population of graduates from Christian or home schools. Nevertheless, for a college to simply dismiss a student because they went to a school that taught the bible was the arbiter of truth is to act not as a home for academic freedom, but as an agent of thought control.

449 posted on 08/15/2008 12:43:05 PM PDT by MEGoody (Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall cause you to vote against the Democrats.)
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To: GodGunsGuts

Had to look that one up...

but it still bears out the hypothesis that the ability to adapt is inherent in the original organism,

and is not due to mutation or addition of information to the DNA sequence.

And, there has to be a LOT of added information to go from single cell to thinking man.


450 posted on 08/15/2008 12:43:45 PM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: GodGunsGuts
Nothing is to prevent it, but if HE did so, apparently HE went through a lot of trouble to make it look like HE didn't. I do not believe that God lies, and there simply is no evidence that ALL living things formed simultaneously and existed contemporaneously; and quite a bit of evidence that they did not.
451 posted on 08/15/2008 12:46:46 PM PDT by allmendream (If "the New Yorker" makes a joke, and liberals don't get it, is it still funny?)
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To: allmendream

==The ability to adapt IS built right in!

Nice try. I’m talking about an ability to adapt that has been frontloaded into the organism, not blind, stupid random mutations that occasionally hit the jackpot and produce a beneficial mutation every couple of million years.


452 posted on 08/15/2008 12:48:55 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: allmendream
quite a bit of evidence that they did not

And this evidence is based on what assumptions?

That sedimentary layers form over periods of years and harden into layers?
Layers/strata of rock formed in a matter of hours during the Mt St Helens eruption, and there are places where you can see "bent" (over 1000's of feet) strata indicating movement while ALL the layers were still soft.

Check your assumptions.

453 posted on 08/15/2008 12:51:00 PM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: MrB

Actually, epigenetics is showing that living organisms are frontloaded with the capacity to adapt. One might even call it directed mutation (and not just in the genes)/adaptation.


454 posted on 08/15/2008 12:51:53 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: allmendream

==Nothing is to prevent it, but if HE did so, apparently HE went through a lot of trouble to make it look like HE didn’t.

I would say that the Darwinists have gone through a lot of trouble to make it look like He didn’t.


455 posted on 08/15/2008 12:55:44 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: MEGoody

Private Christian schools, and homeschoolers taught both ID and ToE are not that uncommon. This is the first time I’ve heard of this happening. If the University has a general policy of denying accreditation simply for inclusion of ID or creationist material, I’d have expected to have seen it go to court way before now.


456 posted on 08/15/2008 1:02:22 PM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: GodGunsGuts

And that’s the whole point of darwinism/evolution theory.

I remembered a certain ubiquitous car emblem that showed a footed fish with “Darwin” in it devouring the Christian icthus symbol.

Don’t tell me that Darwinism doesn’t have the purpose of refuting Christianity.


457 posted on 08/15/2008 1:02:38 PM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: GodGunsGuts

Back to your conspiracy theory garbage again then? Still fantasizing about Scientists frog marched to prison I see.

Try double ply tinfoil!


458 posted on 08/15/2008 1:07:40 PM PDT by allmendream (If "the New Yorker" makes a joke, and liberals don't get it, is it still funny?)
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To: MrB

Here’s a good place to start re: epigenetics. Not only can an organism direct its own adaptations, it can do so without changing its genome, and even more amazingly, it can pass these adaptations on to its offspring!:

https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/b360905554fdb7d985256ec5006a7755?OpenDocument


459 posted on 08/15/2008 1:11:41 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts
How? What mechanism if not through mutation of DNA that leads to a beneficial arrangement of amino acids into a protein that performs a new function, or the same function at higher temperatures etc? Why not? What do you have against the KNOWN, DOCUMENTED, and WELL STUDIED phenomena of natural selection of genetic variation? What does your unproposed mechanism have going for it that makes it superior? Certainly not evidence.

Nothing is stupid about random mutation, especially after you consider the scope of life and time and that a limited heat stress evolution experiment on a limited population of bacteria went through EVERY POSSIBLE combination of single changes in a protein. Trying every possible combination is hardly random.

460 posted on 08/15/2008 1:12:52 PM PDT by allmendream (If "the New Yorker" makes a joke, and liberals don't get it, is it still funny?)
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